@sanjayaksaxena , the stats on slide 34 are from my SlideShare analytics. I made the connection to cold calls based on the purpose of a cold call is to get someone's attention long enough to offer a value message that you believe would benefit them. For every person who viewed the deck, I equated that to a cold call. I posted it on Nov 20th, 40 business days ago (2 months)...51000/40=1275 views.

Inspired - I like to add that social selling is for professionals who think customer success is more important then getting the PO. Today this works well with a SaaS model where for each $1 earned during the 'close', an additional $6 are earned making the customer successful.

Fueled by this business model - sales is now incentivized to do the right thing vs. selling them on a solution that never gets used. Sales superstars will take it a step further and help clients identify a problem/opportunity well ahead of time.

As you outline so clearly - we are offered these incredible new tools to allows to do just that - to learn, discover, educate, inform, share, diagnose, brainstorm and so on and so forth - to help a client.

BUT beware of the huge PENALTY FOR FAILURE if you start using these powerful tools to 'sell', 'close', 'cold call' etc. You may find yourself out of a job as it is for the world to see who you are and how you conduct your business.

This makes the case for education/training and coaching on these new tools. Perhaps one day, 'sales' will be taught at every University with a distinguished degree so that when a kid asks his parent during dinner 'What do you do?' -- she/he can answer 'I help people overcome obstacles, solve problems and prevent them in the future'.